


the theory of immortality

by wlwrwby



Category: RWBY
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Found Family, Gen, Team as Family, grief and mourning, no beta we die like redheads in rwby
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-19 02:53:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29619474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wlwrwby/pseuds/wlwrwby
Summary: "It was 2 AM in Atlas and Ren couldn’t remember Pyrrha’s birthday.It was 2 AM in Atlas and Jaune couldn’t remember Pyrrha’s favorite food.It was 2 AM in Atlas and Nora couldn’t remember what time Pyrrha woke up. "aka: The remnants of Team JNPR fill a notebook full of everything they remember about Pyrrha before they forget.
Relationships: Jaune Arc & Pyrrha Nikos & Lie Ren & Nora Valkyrie, Team JNPR - Relationship
Comments: 8
Kudos: 52





	the theory of immortality

There were only two living beings on Remnant cursed with the gift of immortality. They hadn’t asked for it; it was forced upon them as an unjust punishment for their simple actions of humanity and the flaws that came with it. Ozma and Salem were immortal, yes. And they wished they were anything but. 

The rest of them were finite. Painfully so. They were fragile and reckless and desperate to change the world in their short years of existence. 

Pyrrha Nikos was one of those finite beings. 

But sometimes, it felt as if she was never truly dead. 

For the people she left behind remembered her. And they wouldn’t let anyone forget. 

* * *

Team JNPR, as most teams did, became a family. They would talk of plans after school, how they would graduate together and celebrate each birthday and get a house and go on missions together long after they got their licenses. 

They didn’t get any of that. 

They didn’t even get a year. 

But in the short time they were together, they had grown closer than most blood families. It had felt as if they had known each other for their entire lives and then some. It had felt as if they had met before. In another life, perhaps. Perhaps, then, they had been allowed more time. Perhaps then they had been happy and whole.  
  
The first few months on the road with Ruby were rough. Not because of the young huntress-in-training who had joined their ragtag team, no. They loved Ruby and she soon became one on their team. It just took some getting used to, to say the least. 

Ruby wore red. Pyrrha did too. 

Every once in a while, someone would catch a glimpse of her crimson cape in the corner of their eyes, and turn with hopeful eyes and breath caught in their chest, a name no longer living upon their lips, only to realize who it was that stood before them. 

It was then that all four of them started to believe in ghosts. Pyrrha lived, you see. In their minds, in the flashes of red that tricked them into hoping for a split second that it was all a bad dream, in their heads where her voice rang again and again, in the space they never seemed to notice that they left open for her. Ghosts were real, they found. And they took the form of everything they had lost. 

* * *

Pyrrha was the best of them. She always had been. She still was. 

So it came as a punch to the gut when her murderer walked as if all was well, when Cinder used a mockery of Pyrrha’s spear to almost kill _another_ of their teammates. 

But they didn’t let that happen. In his desperation, Jaune unlocked his semblance, and Weiss was still breathing. They hadn’t lost anyone else. Not yet. They wouldn’t ever again. 

That night, the seven of them had spent the night on the living room floor, desperate to feel whole even when the absence of one was painfully evident. They tried to ignore how one half of them was whole while the other would never be whole again. They tried and they failed. 

Their dreams that night were filled with autumn leaves and apologies. 

* * *

Her ghost followed them to Argus. 

She loomed over their heads when they knocked on Saphron’s door, when she hugged her baby brother tight and greeted the ~~four~~ three of them with a bittersweet expression, trying to ignore how there were only three of them when there had been one more in the tournament. They hadn’t needed to tell her - it was as if she had already known. If she had already seen the aftermath and had mourned and moved on. What a luxury it must be. 

A day passed and a new night came, their group now blissfully whole as it could be. Then the bomb dropped and Oscar ran, and they were on the hunt once more for a missing part of themselves. 

They found it, alright. They found it in the form of a statue made of metal, as if her polarity had pulled them to her even in death. She stood as tall and strong as she had seemed in life, invincible until the day she had fallen. 

There, in the middle of the night in Pyrrha’s hometown, Team JNPR became whole for the last time. She had led them there, as if begging for a final, proper goodbye. 

(They had never said goodbye in the first place. They hadn’t had the chance. So they never called it that.) 

Her statue watched over them. Her eyes were closed, but they could feel her presence. She was standing right before them and watching over them as she always did. She had never left - not in that sense. 

It was there that the space they had left in her wake seemed to close. She stood before them, a promise that she still lived on even after death. She wouldn’t be forgotten. Not until the end of time. 

...But they could move on. In doing so, they wouldn’t forget. 

So they stared back at her ghost, silent tears painting their faces glistening in the pale moonlight. The soft wind seemed to carry her embrace one last time. 

Team JNPR said their final goodbyes and walked away with the knowledge that they would one day meet again. 

Until then, they would remember. 

* * *

Ren couldn’t remember. 

It was 2 AM in Atlas and he couldn’t remember Pyrrha’s birthday. 

It was 2 AM in Atlas and Jaune couldn’t remember Pyrrha’s favorite food. 

It was 2 AM in Atlas and Nora couldn’t remember what time Pyrrha woke up. 

Ren was the first to get up. He swung his legs over his bunk, careful not to awake Oscar below him. He quickly made his way over to his desk and pulled out an unused notebook and a pen. 

“Ren?” 

Jaune spoke from directly behind him. Ren jumped at the sudden voice, turning to see both Jaune and Nora out of bed and leaning over his shoulder. 

“What are you doing?” 

Ren took a second before answering Nora. His pen tapped against the paper as his hand shook. 

“I can’t remember her birthday.” 

A beat. 

“Scoot over.” Nora picked up his chair to make room for two more. Jaune followed her example and sat down on the other side of Ren. 

  
With Jaune and Nora’s guidance, the first page of the notebook was filled with things they remembered about Pyrrha Nikos. 

* * *

_Her birthday was September 27th._

_Loved modern art even though it confused her to no end._

_Favorite class was philosophy._

_She sparred with anyone who asked._

_She hid behind the nearest team member at the slightest sign of the press._

_Always waited for us, even if it made her late to class._

_Was our secret weapon in prank wars since no one expected her to be involved. An evil genius in that respect._

_The worst liar we’ve ever seen._

_Had an extensive skincare routine that she shared with us._

_Would laugh until she cried at the corniest of jokes._

_Braided Ren’s hair before bed each night. He brushed her hair each morning._

_She woke up at 6 AM on weekdays for her morning jog. She slept in on weekends._

_Her favorite food was sushi, specifically when Ren made it._

_She hummed when working and sang in the shower._

_She despised studying._

_She always looked at us with a smile that could rival the sun._

_She cared for others far more than herself._

_She was the definition of a true Huntress._

* * *

Page by page, memory by memory, the notebook’s pages were filled with remembrances of Pyrrha from those she had known. Team RWBY added their own memories. Soon, entire pages were filled with individual stories of her. Some nights were dedicated to the seven of them seated in a circle, listing everything they could remember and telling every tale while another wrote it down, Oscar content to lean on Jaune and learn about the teammate he never knew. 

“She would’ve _loved_ you, Oscar,” Nora says one night. Everyone else nods in agreement and Oscar suddenly feels even more loved. 

One night in their dorm, the eight of them are piled on the floor, the red notebook held in Ruby’s hands as she jots down the time Pyrrha helped her cheat in Oobleck’s class by distracting him with questions while Ren slid her his answers. 

Jaune’s voice broke through the content silence. “We thought we would graduate together,” he said with a broken look in his eyes that could never quite be healed. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.” 

They all held each other a little tighter that night. 

And the sun rose again, and the morning came, and another mission was labeled as a job well done. 

And suddenly Huntsmen licenses were placed in their hands. Suddenly, they had graduated, and for some reason it all felt more damning than all they had been through. Because here they were, graduated and grown according to the world, and she wasn’t standing there with them. 

Instead they were standing, seven instead of eight, in the place that it had all gone wrong. A chair was left empty, a slice of cake was left uneaten. There was a part of them that would never quite heal. 

Pyrrha Nikos had been a Huntress. She hadn’t needed a license for that to be so. 

But she should’ve been standing at their side nonetheless. 

They should’ve graduated years later, not when they hadn’t even completed a full year at Beacon. They shouldn’t be fighting a war. She shouldn’t have died before their lives had even begun. 

But she had. There was nothing to do to fix it. 

Some days it just hit harder than others - the knowledge that she was truly gone. It got easier. But it never quite went away. 

(They wouldn’t let it. For in doing so, it would be as if she had never existed at all.) 

* * *

If Pyrrha had still been alive, they had all once thought, surely, the Gods would declare the war as won in their favor. Because how could humanity be so bad when she existed? How could their experiment be a failure when someone so _good_ had come out of it? 

But she wasn’t alive. No. She had died and took a part of them with her. And it would never be the same. 

Because they would never hear her voice again. They would never see her smile and hear her laugh. They would never fight at her side again. 

Because fate was cruel and destiny even crueler, and they had both taken Pyrrha from them. 

So they fought. Despite it all, they got up each day and fought another day. 

The notebook was finished and another one was begun, filled by everyone who had known her and the memories she had made with them. 

Immortality was a curse, they had learned through a lamp and a tragic story of gods and men. They couldn’t live forever, and none of them wanted to. But memories could. 

And as long as each of them lived and told her stories, Pyrrha Nikos would live on forever. 

_For it is in passing that we achieve immortality._

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Feel free to leave a kudos or comment letting me know your thoughts and feelings, and check out my other RWBY works as well if you'd like! You can find me on twitter @wlwrwby for more RWBY ramblings and angst.
> 
> Once again, thanks so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed and have a lovely, lovely day! <33


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